Anyone knows when to look out for the next big performance boost?

Hi all. I've kind of been out of touch regarding computers for a long time so I'm wondering if anyone can answer this. MBP updates usually either have a minor improvement, or have a huge architectural change (eg. Penryn -> Arrandale -> Sandy Bridge) which tends to brings about huge changes with it (Core 2 to i7 to Quad Core). I'm kind of wondering, when will the next major improvement be?

Above in my opinion are the best and the worst times upgrades to the Mac pretty much based on a hardware basis of how much of an improvement there was with regards to CPU & GPU.

Does anyone know when the next big jump will be and roughly which quarter will it be released? I'm not really expecting Ivy Bridge to be too much of a jump so I'm assuming it's gonna be the one after that which is Haswell, would that be right? Anyone has any rough idea when Haswell MBPs will come out? Q1/2 2013? Q3/4 2013? 2014?

Hi all. I've kind of been out of touch regarding computers for a long time so I'm wondering if anyone can answer this. MBP updates usually either have a minor improvement, or have a huge architectural change (eg. Penryn -> Arrandale -> Sandy Bridge) which tends to brings about huge changes with it (Core 2 to i7 to Quad Core). I'm kind of wondering, when will the next major improvement be?

Above in my opinion are the best and the worst times upgrades to the Mac pretty much based on a hardware basis of how much of an improvement there was with regards to CPU & GPU.

Does anyone know when the next big jump will be and roughly which quarter will it be released? I'm not really expecting Ivy Bridge to be too much of a jump so I'm assuming it's gonna be the one after that which is Haswell, would that be right? Anyone has any rough idea when Haswell MBPs will come out? Q1/2 2013? Q3/4 2013? 2014?

Technically you are right about Sandy Bridge --> IVyBridge, however that leaves the question of exactly what speed processors Apple will offer a factor as well. Also, USB 3.0 is a possibility.

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Does anyone know when the next big jump will be and roughly which quarter will it be released? I'm not really expecting Ivy Bridge to be too much of a jump so I'm assuming it's gonna be the one after that which is Haswell, would that be right? Anyone has any rough idea when Haswell MBPs will come out? Q1/2 2013? Q3/4 2013? 2014?

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The next big jump will be when Intel and/or ATI provide the chips for it. As for Haswell? Look at Intels roadmap and add anywhere from 0 to 3 months to it.

So Apple apparently skipped one "Tock", the "Clarksfield" CPU family does not appear in any MBP. Then of course the 2010 upgrade was huge, since it was both a new architecture and a die shrink.

Then Sandy Bridge was also a big jump, mostly because we moved from 2 to 4 cores.

I would say that a new processor architecture is more likely to give you a big performance boost. On the other hand, if the die shrink allows you to add more cores, you also win. In that sense, Sandy Bridge was exceptional - new architecture + doubled the number of cores.
I don't see a similar jump in the next two years, but three small steps also make a big one!

The next big jump will be when MBPs go to 8-core. Won't be for a while yet. Possibly with Haswell next year, or likely Broadwell (Why did I think it was called Rockwell?) sometime in 2014.

GPU jumps are harder to predict in some ways, as AMD and NVIDIA seem to work more on a year-by-year basis, without a long term road/goal map. However, the improvements themselves are more predictable, as card performance generally just drops a bracket with each generation. For example, the 7750M/7770M performance will likely be very similar to the 6850M/6870M, but with similar power draw as the 6750M/6770M. I would just hope for a 20-40% year-by-year improvement in GPU power.

So Apple apparently skipped one "Tock", the "Clarksfield" CPU family does not appear in any MBP. Then of course the 2010 upgrade was huge, since it was both a new architecture and a die shrink.

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Clarksfield was skipped because it used a 45nm process, and had low clock speeds (<2 GHz). Where as the Arrandale family, which was released at a similar time, used a 32nm process, and had much higher clock speeds (>2.5 GHz).

And considering a dual core 2.8GHz CPU will thrash a quad 1.8GHz at most tasks (especially as we're talking 2 years ago, when multithreaded processes was not the norm, and Turbo Boost was pathetic), Apple obviously decided the quads weren't worth it.

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